Multiple beams too close to notehead

[Urs Liska]

Hi all,

I've always found that beams with three or more beams look too tight,
but now reading Gould, p. 19 confirms that, and I consider this a
type-ugly bug:

According to Gould outer beams starting with the third should move away
from the notehead, and "beams should never be closer to the notehead
than the correct position of the semiquaver beam (2 1/2 spaces)".

Attached you'll find examples for three and four beams, and I expect
this to continue with more beams. I have colored the ones too close in
red and adjusted them (blue) to Gould's minimum distance.
It seems:

  * when the notehead is on a ledger line the rule of one clear staff
    space in the staff is correctly applied
  * when the notehead falls on one of the four outer staff lines the
    stem length is correct
  * when the notehead falls on the center line the stem has to be
    extended by 1/2 ss
  * when the notehead falls on any staff space (including the ones
    directly outside the staff) the stem has to be extended by 1 ss

Urs

beams-too-close.ly
Description: Text Data

beams-too-close.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document